“I know a great deal about Annie Dale and the suspicious life she led in a certain mining district for a year,” Everet retorted, with reckless scorn.
He had been wrought to the highest pitch of angry excitement by finding Geoffrey and Mr. Huntress there before him.
“I know,” he went on, “how she was enticed away by the promise of a marriage which never took place, and how she afterward died—doubtless of a broken heart—leaving a nameless brat to inherit her shame.”
“Everet! you have suddenly taken leave of your senses! I believe you are in the delirium of fever,” returned his father, regarding his now flushed face and glittering eyes with alarm. “But have a care over your words. How on earth you have become possessed of such strange notions is more than I can account for.”
“I can easily enlighten you. I have a couple of letters in my possession that were written by Annie Dale’s lover, which will prove all that I have hinted at; and I found a very pretty ring, too, last summer, during my travels—not a wedding-ring, either, mind you. I doubt if she ever had that—which was lost, on the very spot where she had lived and died.”
He drew both letters and ring from one of his pockets, as he spoke, and flung them upon the table, before his father.
Colonel Mapleson recognized them at once, while he was amazed by the fact of their being in the possession of his son. One of the letters he remembered losing after a visit to the cottage where his Annie had once lived, and he had been greatly disturbed over the fact; but the other, and the ring—which his dear wife had lost one night while sitting on the porch in their mountain home—he could not understand how he came by them.
“You found that ring?” he asked, amazed.
“Yes. I visited a certain cottage among the mountains of New Mexico last summer, and while standing upon one of the steps leading up to the door it gave way, and underneath I found this ring.”
“Ah! we never thought of looking under the step,” said the colonel, musingly. “It was a little loose for her finger just then, and, slipping off, rolled away out of sight, and we thought it very strange that we could not find it. Yes,” he continued, taking it up and regarding it tenderly, “Annie Dale never had her engagement-ring until the day of her marriage, when this was put on her finger as a guard to her wedding-ring! Annie Dale was my loved and honored wife, Everet, and Geoffrey, my son and hers,” indicating the young man by a motion of his hand, “will show you the certificate of our marriage, and the ring with which she was wed!”